Come this fall when Apple has its September 9th event, a digital wallet may be coming to the iPhone to help grow the mobile payment business. We've heard that American Express may be a major partner to the initiative, and now we are also hearing that Visa and Mastercard may also be joining forces with Apple in a rumored NFC-based payments announcement.

Apple is once again rumored to be including NFC in its next iPhone, this time with a payment system in tow. Reports of a payment system in the iPhone 6 emerged late last month. The system will reportedly be a central focus of the iPhone 6 reveal, expected September 9.

With the iPhone 6 event expected for September 9, rumors are going to give us a whole new definition of crazy. We're not talking an espresso machine in the Lightning port here, but we are talking a harder — though not sapphire hard — screen, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, near-field communications (NFC), a 2 GHz Apple A8 system-on-a-chip (SoC), and perhaps even a special way to pair with Beats headphones.

Canadian coffee shop chain Tim Hortons has just launched a new mobile barcode payments system that allows you to pay using the TimmyMe app. The payment option has been in testing over the last few months, and is now available for all users in Canada and the United States.

iPhone users on Verizon Wireless can now use the Incipio Cashwrap NFC case for iPhone that allows them to make payments with the ISIS Mobile Wallet app for Verizon. The case was launched for AT&T iPhone users two weeks ago, and like the AT&T app, using the Verizon ISIS app requires use of the case, according to Verizon.

Incipio has released its rumored NFC-enabled case that will enable tap-to-pay on the iPhone. The Incipio Cashwrap works with the ISIS Mobile Wallet app for AT&T Mobility, and is available today for $69.99.

The lack of NFC on the iPhone is a downer when it comes to using it for tap-to-pay purchases. ISIS, however, has long been talking about coming to the iPhone through a tie-up with case maker Incipio. Prototypes have been shown off, but now, the folks at Engadget have received the first concrete evidence that these things might actually go on sale:

The iPhone 5s -- or whatever Apple ends up calling it -- is rumored be sporting both NFC and a fingerprint scanner. Chipbond, a Taiwanese company, has apparently been tapped to provide some components of the next iPhone, including touch display drivers, NFC chips, and chips that support a fingerprint sensor. China Times reports:

AuthenTec, whom Apple was rumored to be interested in buying for $350M, has just sold off their inside security division to Inside Secure for $48M. While we have our ideas of what Apple could be doing with AuthenTec and its list of patents, we can probably assume now that it is something other than their security technology.